Mets Minors: 2009 Draft time capsule (Steven Matz)

Note: This was written and ready to go last Monday but a little hurricane got in the way. I’ll start working on 2010 and have that ready for next week. In the meantime I will also say that anyone who reads this should get out and vote today.

The Mets were not entering the 2009 draft with supremely high expectations. They had no Round 1 or compensation round picks, so they were looking at the 2nd round (72 Overall) as their top pick.

The Mets have some value from the 2009 draft but it’s not promising that only one impact player is as far as AA by the end of 2012. When Matz was drafted with high praise for his abilities but tremendous concern over his health and longevity. Consider he was drafted in 2009 and only played through Rookie League Kingsport in 2012. The biggest regret of the 2009 draft for the Mets was that the round 5 and 6 pitchers didn’t sign. (I was really excited to get a jersey with ‘Magnifico’ on the back) Sigh… Even so, the draft was to recent to really say how successful the Mets were but looking at the Winners it’s hard to see anyone but Matz and Maron in a starting role. What makes that less good is the fact that Maron was in Savannah for 2012 and Matz was in Kingsport. So how did the Mets fair compared to other teams.

What I saw in a review of this draft in general terms was that the MLB talent was largely gone by the time the Mets selected late in the second round. I’m sure that an in depth review of each team’s minor league might give me a better view of which teams did better than others. Another 2-3 years and the winners and losers should be crystal clear. The Mets, in my opion, were draft losers before the draft began. Consider that we could be looking at Mike Trout in the outfield today if not for Francisco Rodriguez. I take off some additional points for the failure to sign Magnifico and Buchanan. Overall, unless Matz becomes a #3 pitcher or better this draft deserves a grade no higher than a D.

Not a good draft. Mets spent 1.7 M total on the first 10 rounds. KC spent 2 M alone on their 3rd rounder Wil Myers #3 rated prospect RH hitting CFer originally drafted as a catcher.

Maron threw out 10% of runners this past year but does hit line drives and is age appropriate for his level. Chism was 23 in the Sally League and quite possibly a rule 5 casualty. Whittenden 24 in A+, Matz, Gorski, Ceciliani, Dotson (over slot 500K)it’s very hard to say.

Braves with Minor and Nats with Storen (selected with a pick from the year before) added producing talent. Phills have some HS kids looking good in the lower levels and traded Jonathon Singleton (8th rounder, #34th rated prospect) to Houston for Pence, then cashed Pence in for a 2nd round catcher Tommy Jospehs from SF. They also have a RH hitting 1B/LF who’s up already (Ruf 20th round)and was terrific in limited action. Marlins as per usual took a lot of upside HS kids. Too soon to tell but it’s not looking good although Brent Keys (17th round) has put himself on the map in the Sally.

Overall we definitely lost ground to the Braves, Phillies and Nat’s and possibly the Marlins as well depending on their HS kids. Cinn had a real good draft as well. Leake, Boxberger (Latos deal) Billy Hamilton, Devin Merrero and 3rd rounder Donnie Joseph got them Broxton. Cards have 4 guys up already plus Shelby Miller. Giants with Wheeler, Joseph and Belt. Rockies Matzuk, Tim Wheeler, Rex Brothers and Nolan Arenado is a great job. Yanks with Heathcott, Murphy and Warren looks like it’ll help.

Early returns are quite good for a lot of teams but the polls haven’t closed.

Very interesting. Many times I looked at the Met draft and thought that they just had a poor scouting dept and were poor evaluaters. It actually appears that they had a very poor, non competitive budget for the draft and spent the money on the major league level instead. I’m sure few fans (including myself) realized this. Thanks

It’s very true. We have outspent 2 other teams in MLB in the draft from 2005-2010 and not by marginal amounts either. Most other teams in MLB have spent 3 or 4 times what we did.

One strategy used to keep the draft budget low is the late season salary dump to avoid obtaining draft choices. Wagner and Barajas could have gotten us two supplemental and one 1st round pick but we opted for a LH DH (Chris Carter) and cash. Signing FA’s before they have to be offered arbitration (Alou) is another way to dump a pick as is not offering arbitration (Alfonzo and Floyd) Even when we have obtained extra picks it’s not always because we offered arb. The Braves signed Glavine before that decision had to be made or we most likely wouldn’t have Ike Davis right now and when we have offered arb we still adhere to slot or go below as we did with the 2007 Kunz, Vineyard, Rustich, Moviel, Niessen Clyne draft in which we had two supplemental, two 2nd’s and two 3rd’s. Arguably that draft could have provided us with two big pieces that would be making the difference for us right now. NL Eastern teams drafted Freeman, Stanton, Zimmerman, Cishek, Travis d’Anaurd, Michael Taylor and Derek Norris all in the late supplemental round on down to the 5th round in the draft in which we gift wrapped our best choice to SF for Alou despite their being little chance they would offer him arb as they had just fired his father and Alou just wasn’t capable of playing RF anymore (Bonds was in LF) We could have cut a deal with Cliff Floyd (as the NYY did with Vazquez) to offer and have Cliff decline arb and gotten an extra supplemental round choice as well.

One strategy that keeps the cost down is drafting college players. They really don’t have much leverage if they want to play professional baseball. Sign for slot or head back to school and try their luck the following year. HS players on the other hand do have leverage and frequently numerous interested teams which means a higher commitment. We frequently by pass them with the result being that our slot selection players work their way through a weak system and arrive at 25-27 years old and frequently posses just one or two tools while the slower developing HS player, recognized at 17 or 18 as a potential future Major Leaguer often has 3 or 4 tools and retains his value and a chance to be up in his prime even when he starts off slowly or has an injury or two. Not the college player, they have to move fast in order for their physical prime to meet up with experience. HS players are also much better in which to make trades as GM’s and scouting directors are familiar with them from 2-4 years beforehand and they are now 20-23 and it can be seen how their 3-4 tools are translating but again, you have to spread around a little seed money.

I am sure the Scouting Department has been well aware of the draft budget and consequently has sought to make educated value picks as opposed to honing in on top HS kids because they also require more from a scout in terms of his time. The scout has to get to know the kid, his family, show interest, take them out to dinner and gain their trust so when the time comes they’ll be comfortable sending their 18 year old to Kingsport. If there is very little chance of drafting this type of player why bother?

I think there is zero chance this philosophy was implemented for baseball reasons. I think it was all done for business reasons. The normal over slot HS kid may take 4-6 years to pay off if ever while the FA begins paying dividends before he gets a dime and right at the critical stage of season and plan renewals and single game ticket sales. The whole courting process is covered by the press right up to the announcement of the signing and generates tons of favorable publicity, good will and affords ownership the opportunity to say that they have been big spenders, it just didn’t work out.

A few months after spending just 1.7M on the 2009 draft the Mets went out and committed 66M to Jason Bay and I would bet anything that he paid for himself from a business standpoint regardless of how he did on the field.

It’s not by accident that we have developed so few position playing prospects, it’s more by deliberate design and that is the reason we have no OFer’s or catchers, very little depth and scarce assets to trade and have been forced to go the expensive and risky FA process all too often.

David, if you don’t mind I’ll give my thoughts on the 2010 draft here as an oft delayed construction project of mine is finally about to break that will command a ton of time. I’ve enjoyed all the articles, writers and posters here on Mets360 and will be checking in as often as possible.

Certainly Matt Harvey appears to be an unqualified success but that is more due to having the 7th pick which I don’t think was the plan entering the 2009 season. We should get a player in that spot when we draft in the top 10. To Minaya’s credit we did.

We also took a catcher in one of the top three rounds for the first time in 15 years (Blake Forsythe 3rd rnd, 392K) and a couple of two-three tool college OFer’s (Vaughn, 240K and den Dekker 110K, defense, power speed?) Peavey 200K and Goedell 350K were marginal over slot choices at +75K and +200K respectively but were counterbalanced by 5th rounder den Dekker (110K) and 7th rounder Walters (50K) at -50K and -75K respectively. DeGrom 95K Morris 120K Kolerak ? and Fraser ? certainly appear to have been worthwhile choices and Edgin (at less than 2K) how can you complain? I swear one successful strategy in the draft would be to just sign whichever players the Braves selected but didn’t sign in previous years.

Still and all any discussion of the 2010 draft would have to begin with the two picks (20th and 39th as it turns out) that we traded away for LH DH Chris Carter in the Wagner trade and the 2nd rounder we shipped over to Boston as well for Jason Bay.

There are numerous top prospects including guys we would absolutely love to trade for that were drafted between the 20th and 57th pick (Bay’s) that could already be ours including HS CFer Christian Yelich at #23 400K over slot to Miami at 1.7M who at 20 produced a .330/.404/.519 in A+ after entering 2012 as BA’s #41 ranked prospect. SF’s RH CFer and frequent trade target Gary Brown in AA BA’s #37 ranked prospect went at 24. 3B Zach Cox, BA’s #88th ranked prospect went at #25 to St. Louis. RH RFer Kyle Parker went at #26 .308/.414/.562 A+ to Colorado. HS LHP Jesse Biddle went #27 to Philly. HS RHP and BA’s #62 Zach Lee went at #28 in a massive over slot to LAD 5.25M. HS RHP Aaron Sanchez went at #34 and at 19 posted a 2.49 in A+ to Toronto. RH RFer Bryce Brentz .296/.355/.465 in AA went #36 to Boston. SS Taylor Lindsey 20 in A+ .289/.328/.408 in A+ went to LAA at #37. HS RHP Noah Snydergaard, 19 A+ 2.60 went at #38 to Toronto. RHP Asher Wojciechowski 2.06 AA went at #41 to Toronto. HS RFer Drew Vettleson 20 in A+ .275/.340/.432 to TB at #42. HS RHP and BA’s #20 Taijuan Walker went to Seattle at #43. HS 3B and BA’s #45 Nick Castellanos to Detroit at 44, huge over slot at 3.45M (+2.6M) 3B Mike Olt BA’s #43 went to Texas at #49.

Plenty of top rated prospects taken after the pick we gave up for Bay were available as well. 2B Jedd Gyorko to SD, LHP Drew Smyley (+450K)to Detroit, SS Andrelton Simmons to the Braves, HS LHP Justin Nicolino (+150K) to Toronto and that’s just through the 2nd round.

Not trying to say every prospect is going to make it but at least their team has a chance and it should be noted that some teams took measures to add additional picks and one of them, Toronto has possibly procured an entire starting rotation from just the first 2 rounds of this draft partly due to the three picks they got for losing Marco Scutero and Rod Barajas to free agency.

The 3 picks we could have had were spent on Chris Carter and Jason Bay.

In the end up Atlanta gets Simmons for sure and possibly Cunningham. Nat’s Harper, AJ Cole (part of Gio) and Sammy Solis. Miami gets Yelich and an over slot (+200K) HS SS turned catcher JT Realmuto in the 3rd and Philly gets LHP Jesse Biddle. We have Harvey and Edgin for sure and a bunch of questions just like everyone else at this point.

It was a novel draft in that we didn’t lose any ground on our N L East competitors but it certainly remains in doubt if we gained any. If we did it was on Philly and it may not be all that much.

We also did go over a couple of times but it’s always on pitching, and very very marginal and always made up for by going under elsewhere. Once again there were plenty of OFer’s many of them HS kids currently highly regarded and on track to hit the Majors at 22-24 that we could have selected had we kept our picks but will instead play against. den Dekker is 26 next August and Vaughn 24 in May. For that matter Peavy is 25 in July and Goeddel 24 next month. We must have the oldest prospects in MLB and their all old for their levels as well and not exactly dominating to say the least. Makes you wonder. Of the 11 HS kids we drafted we signed just one, Akeel Morris.

With so many elite talent 3-4 tool OFer’s available it is a sin that we didn’t keep our picks and go over as large as necessary to get one. Imagine our farm if Yelich, Brown or Kyle Parker were on the way. It would put all our other OF pieces into a workable configuration assuming they make it but it’s a much greater chance that they do and they hit it big than our slot and under slot selection 4th and 5th rounders.

Once again as usual the industry spoke to the value of our draft picks and said that our 240K and 110K OF prospects were less valuable than Miami’s 1.7M, SF’s 1.45M and Colorado’s 1.4M dollar one’s and we could have easily had Harvey AND one of them if we were willing to spend what is essentially cab fare for a Major league baseball team but we threw away the picks for salary relief and window dressing.